We'd like to capture some common CVS workflows used by the Eclipse Project and spell out the git/EGit equivalent. Please read this page even if you don't use EGit. It contains important instructions on how to setup your repository.

Please read some of Pro Git to get a feel for how git repositories work. Refer to the EGit/User Guide for more detailed instructions and pictures.

Configure the workspace

Open the Team > Git > Configuration preference page and on the User Settings tab add the user.name and the user.email property. If you don't want to share your e-mail you can also use your committer account ID. Note that you will not be able to push changes to the the repository if the latter property is not matching with your records at the Eclipse Foundation.

Set New text file line delimiter to Unix on the General > Workspace preference page.

Finish - Now just sit back while git copies the entire repo to your harddrive :-)

Configuring the repo

Unless you are working on topic branches, we work in a fairly linear history. Please set branch.branchname.rebase = true (see instructions below).

Make sure that you set core.autocrlf=false and on Windows core.filemode=false. If you use EGit to clone the repository then this is done automatically for you.

Once you've cloned a repository, you can go to the Preferences > Team > Git > Configuration page. Select your repository, select the branch you picked when you cloned the repository and click New Entry.... Append "rebase" to the text in the 'Key' field and enter "true" as value.

To automate the setting of "branch.branchname.rebase = true" if you use command line git, add "branch.autosetuprebase = always" to your global user settings. Unfortunately, this does not yet work properly in EGit, see Bug 345536.

Importing the projects

We need to get the projects from the repo into our workspace:

right click on your newly cloned repo and select Import Projects

you want Import existing projects from the Working Directory

Next

Select the projects that you want to import from the repository

Finish

Now you can start working.

A note on deleting projects

Typically you will only want to have a subset of the projects from a given repository in your workspace. When you are no longer interested in a project, you can delete it from your workspace. However, NEVER select 'Delete project contents on disk' for a project in a git repository. If you do, Git will consider this an outgoing deletion to be committed to the remote branch. Later while working on a completely unrelated project you may accidentally commit this deletion (and you wouldn't be the first to do so).

Start working in HEAD

To start working in HEAD you must clone your repository and checkout a working copy. By default, cloning the repo checks out the master branch, which is the same as HEAD in CVS.

right click on one of your projects and choose Team>Switch To>New Branch

you need to pick a source ref.

HEAD == current checked out commit

refs/heads/master means your master branch.

refs/remotes/origin/R3_7_maintenance - the existing remote branch. If you pick this one and name your local branch the same, EGit will automatically create a tracked branch.

refs/tags/R3_7 is the tags to branch from

name the branch R3_7_maintenance

select the Rebase merge option

leave "Check out the new branch" selected.

This will create a new branch for you to work on. Once you've made your initial commits, you need #Commit_changes_to_the_main_repo. Pushing up to the repo will push any new branches you've created as well.

Contributing to a build

Daily development occurs in the master branch, but weekly integration builds are done out of a branch called integration. The builder takes care of tagging the build inputs and updating bundle qualifiers for those bundles that have changed. To contribute a repository to the build, do the following:

Manual tagging

Tagging for weekly integration builds is not needed, but sometimes you still need to tag. For example, tagging with a Rx_y tag when a release is done. To create a tag, use git tag mynewtag from the command line or the EGit Tag Dialog. Once a tag has been added, you must push the tag to the repository.

To push a specific tag, use git push origin mynewtag from the command line or use the following steps in EGit:

Team > Remote > Push...

Click Next to get to the Specifications Page

In the Source ref box, enter in refs/tags/mynewtag (content assist is available to quickly find a tag)

Click Add Spec

Click Next

Assuming the dry run is successful, click Finish

You can push all tags using git push --tags from the command line or pressing the Add All Tags Spec on the Specifications Page in EGit. However, this is risky as you will push all local tags and you will replace any tags that have been deleted from the remote repository.

The e4 Git page has some helpful scripts and additional information on tagging

Commit changes to the main repo

Committing a change to the main repo is a 2-step process in git. In git, a commit creates a commit with the changed files in your local clone repository. A push will put that commit in our main repo. Committing and pushing are distinct operations in git.